Team appointed to select IBRA bad debtors
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government said it has appointed a team of legal experts to filter out uncooperative debtors from the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA), paving the way for legal action against them.
Called the legal counsel, the team would work for a month to identify the bad debtors, Secretary of the Financial Sector Policy Committee (FSPC) Syafruddin Temenggung said on Monday.
"It will be a snapshot of debtors' compliance with their debt settlement deals," he told reporters, anticipating that the counsel will wrap up its work by April 18.
The legal counsel is part of a new approach against the debtors, after an earlier plan to grant them a longer payment period was scrapped following intense public criticism.
At stake is some US$10 billion, mostly in misused liquidity loans, which former bank owners agreed to repay IBRA in return for not facing criminal charges.
For many, the deadline by which to settle their debts expires this year.
Syafruddin said that the legal counsel consisted of two teams, with one being in charge of identifying the bad debtors.
That team would be the legal assistance team which has, among its six members, lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis, and IBRA's head of litigation division, Robertus Bilitea.
The second team, called the legal assistance direction team, will consult the government, and evaluate the first team's work.
Members of this team include lawyers Kartini Mulyadi, Luhut Pangaribuan, and officials from the police force, and the General Attorney's Office.
Head of the second team, FSPC vice secretary, Hadiah Herawati, said that only reputable lawyers with no connection to IBRA's debtors could sit in the legal counsel.
"We asked them (the lawyers) whether they had represented (a debtor) in a case against IBRA," she said, adding that they cross-checked the information with IBRA's database.
Syafruddin added that, once the FSPC approved the teams' work and debtors received the results, the uncooperative ones would be given three months to settle any shortfall in their agreements.
"They don't need to settle their entire debts within the three months, only the amount they had neglected to pay," he said.
But the bulk of the debts are being repaid under a scheme that does not have a payment schedule other than its four-year deadline.
Falling under the Master of Settlement and Acquisition Agreement (MSAA) are some $5.6 billion in debts on which payments have virtually stopped.
Owned by five of the country's largest conglomerates, the debts are to be repaid through asset transfers.
But the MSAA leaves it up to the debtors when they want to start their payments, which may block the legal counsel from claiming those who have not begun payment as violating the MSAAs.
Elsewhere, legislators urged the government to immediately ban the large uncooperative debtors from travel overseas, while their debt settlement accords were being reviewed.
"Waiting for the conclusion of the legal counsel might be too late, as the bad debtors may have fled overseas by the time they are required for questioning," House Vice Speaker for economic affairs Tosari Widjaya said in a statement.